Wow, what a ride it’s been so far this year! We’ve secured the Series A round for development, launched a new trailer and seen a huge increase in the community, especially over on our Discord server. Now, it’s time to give you a development update!

So Ívar, what has changed since we last spoke in January?

Ívar: “January feels like ages ago! Klang has almost doubled in size!

During this time we created Mocktown™, our elaborate ant colony. Where we readjusted our focus to concentrate on the overall picture and by removing various elements, we were able to focus on the simulation from a broader perspective and not lose ourselves in minor detail. This experiment both shed light on a bunch of issues and revealed both technical and design questions which we're currently working our way through.

We continued to significantly improve the Seedling AI, their needs and desires have taken leaps and bounds, we also added Seedling thoughts that allows them to better express themselves. We're currently giving Seedlings the ability to interact with one another, which will ultimately enable a bunch of features (combat, relationships, etc.).

Our landscape is starting to shape up, everything is starting to look really good, although we're still in the discovery phase of that initiative. Alongside improving our 'single biome' environment (the island), the artists are doing a great job creating concepts and mockups of different areas of our world and researching techniques on how to reach those visual targets.

On our modular building track, we kept experimenting and created a prototype with the goal of maximizing fun, usability and satisfaction. One of our primary goals is to offer the best collaborative building experience, we still have a pretty long road ahead of us, but we're getting there.”

What were the most significant challenges over the past few months?

Í: “We were struggling a bit with quality after our GDC push; it's been great to see the team pull together and tackle that problem, as well as establish processes to ensure we don't fall into that pit again. Our overall stability and bug count are at an all-time best. We really want to be in a state where we can start external playtesting, so it's important to keep the quality level up.”

Any exciting features being worked on right now?

Í: “The best part about this project is that we're continually working on exciting features!

We're taking the first steps in our combat system, so far we only have a very basic prototype, but it's already answering some questions and sparking a lot of ideas.

While it's not really a feature, Eran has been working on the next iteration of our Seedling models; they're looking beyond amazing. Also just very exciting to see the full lifecycle visualized, from toddler to oldster.”

What are the next most important features to be worked on?

Í: “The tough part about the development of Seed is that all planned features for the MVP feel important. We're creating an emergent sandbox MMO, most of our systems will interact in one way or another.

I think Seedling relationships will be critical. They'll both give Seedlings a lot of depth and hopefully build relationships between players. We still haven't figured out all the details, but it feels essential.”

The Seed Discord is up-and-running! How does it feel to be growing this core community

Í: “It's amazing to see the community grow! I love how open the communication channels are. I'm a lurker by nature, so I read everything from my shadowy corner, but I don't feel like I communicate there enough right now. I'm working on changing that.”